


Dreams of Roses

by eyeslikerain



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: AU second year in Hampden, Francis overreacting..., Living Together, M/M, a visit from a ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 10:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16638329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyeslikerain/pseuds/eyeslikerain
Summary: “What?” I mumbled. “Francis, what’s up? Did you have a nightmare?”He sat rigid in the bed and tried frantically to gather some sheets around him.“He’s here!”, he wailed in a thin, horrified voice.“Who?”“Henry is here, I can feel him!” He clawed at me with icy fingers. “Don’t you?”





	Dreams of Roses

**Author's Note:**

> An old fic from my drafts. Why not?
> 
> Taking place before "Fall in the City". Sorry for the chaos...

Settling back into school routine was completely different from the doomed year before. As I wasn’t new to Hampden anymore, everything went a little smoother and easier. I still had the dreaded upheaval of changing majors, but, without expecting it, I was silently greeted like a returning warrior, like a wounded soldier. Freshmen whispered behind my back and Judy Poovey did everything she could to let the events of my near – shooting shine in the most melodramatic way. Dr. Roland was genuinely pleased to see me again, especially as he had own research going on and would need somebody to take over even more of his mundane work. This meant also increased hours for me – a most welcome extra income. My English professor treated me with respect due to the fact that I had belonged to Julian’s handpicked crowd. I felt instinctively drawn towards him, although he was in almost every aspect the opposite of Julian: much younger, relaxed, but very ambitious regarding his own academic career. He seemed to care about the future and advancement of his students because it reflected the quality of his own teaching and furthered his own progress.  
During our first personal meeting, he expected a very concrete outlook of what I wanted from this year (and even what kind of academic plans I had further on – a thought I hadn’t given any consideration myself). He also worked out an outline with me what he expected from me this quarter, and announced regular check-ins with him. No more Greek poets for the mere beauty of it, no more ancient epics – his list of work made me realize that I couldn’t afford as many drunken weekends at the country house like before.  
Francis had decided to take a break from college. After Julian’s class had been scattered so disastrously, he didn’t know how he wanted to go on. Though being frightfully intelligent and quick of wit, he could be rather relaxed regarding school work. I am sure he loved Greek (or, possibly more true, everything connected with the ancient world and the overall aesthetics of it), but he never had aspired a real career in this field. Due to his family’s considerable wealth, he never would have to work a single day in his life. But it looked better to have a degree, whatever it was. Nevertheless, he still needed to find out what might interest him. I didn’t mind or resent him being so much more fortunate than me in financial regards. I was just firmly decided to work towards a better future for myself as I couldn’t afford to lose any more time.  
Francis came back to Hampden, though, and I was very, very glad about this. I had worried about him in the summer and couldn’t imagine leaving him all by himself, maybe slipping back into anxiety and depression again. Having him near myself, it was easier to make sure he was doing fairly well. And – he had asked me to move in with him. He had kept his apartment, and to me, it was significant and a huge step to move into the very place where we had shared our first uninterrupted, snow-scented kiss. I was hesitant at first. Matters progressed a little too quickly and it seemed rather early to commit to each other in such a serious way. But he persuaded me easily, stating we could always relapse into the status of roommates if I felt too uncomfortable being a couple (which was nonsense, as he knew also.) I was so deeply in love, so wonderfully out of my mind that I saw everything ahead of us through rose-tinted glasses. Judging from a distance, I am surprised how silly and young and optimistic we had been. But it worked, and living together gave both of us exactly the stability we needed.  
Francis had offered me the spare bedroom which functioned as a prettily but sparsely furnished guestroom, featuring just an old wrought-iron bed and a dresser apart from the walk-in closet. We both thought it important to have rooms to ourselves, maybe even separate beds eventually – Francis announced that he tended to have something like a “cursed time of the month”, recurring with a strange regularity, and that I just had to cope with him being bitchy and uncomfortable sometimes. Living with him, it proved to be less scary than he had announced. He even admitted he hadn’t known that carnal love and tenderness would improve his moods considerably, and that having me beside him was much better than brooding alone.  
But I liked and cherished my own room anyway, and it was just necessary to have a desk of my own where I could leave my stuff. We both didn’t want a messy dining room table. When Francis offered to choose some furniture I needed from the basement of the country house, I was once again moved and touched by his generosity and hoped I would be able to return his kindness some day. Regarding material matters, he always told me not to worry – he believed in me, he knew my eagerness and steadfastness and was sure I would start a successful career. He told me I always could pay him back then, if I felt the urge. But he would appreciate it much more if I gave back to him now in immaterial, erotic ways. Strangely, I was fine with this concept and didn’t feel like a courtesan or whatever. We had an agreement, and I thought our love sincere and true enough to endure the uneven financial situation.  
On our weekend at the country house just before school started, we made a trip down to the basement (and down memory lane, making out a bit while leaning against the old sleigh) and unearthed a beautiful, simple old desk with just one drawer, the kind you find in kitchens of French country cookbooks, a matching chair with a lyre and a broad, low bookcase. Francis complimented me on my taste, having chosen the more simpler items of this Aladdin’s cave, and I was proud and grateful after we had unloaded everything in our apartment: never had a student had a finer room, I thought. Who else lived surrounded by beautiful old furniture at this stage of life? I put my humble sheets onto the bed (Mrs. Abernathy should gift me with a set of luxurious bedding for Christmas, not realizing I had been sharing her son’s bed for the last few months) while Francis unpacked my few books and arranged them in the shelves.  
“Let’s have some plants in here, shall we? Like in that apartment in Brooklyn?”  
And like that, one more character trait which stayed with me all my life evolved. The year before, Julian’s class had influenced me highly regarding my hitherto non-existent fashion sense. Living with Francis, noticing the little pretty details of interior design and furniture, furthered my ongoing love for antiques, plants and always too many books. I certainly hadn’t gotten any of this from my parents.

October had delighted us with the most splendid display of yellow, orange and copper leaves. The maples on campus were burning against blue skies and it was unusually warm. Nevertheless, the forecast had announced a severe drop in temperature for the next days, and when I walked past Henry’s old apartment on Water Street on my way home from class (not exactly a shortcut, but I seemed to need this almost daily quick check-in, a little wave) I realized the clouds of late roses he had cultivated wouldn’t survive much longer. One of the girls, also an English major, who shared his apartment with two other girls, saw me from the porch and stepped down to have a chat, fighting off the barking boxer dog who had survived Henry’s experiment with Amanita phalloides. I remarked upon the roses. She seemed to see them for the first time, mentioned matter-of-factly that none of them was much of a gardener and I could take as many as I liked. She went in to get a knife and watched me silently cutting quite a bunch of them. I was thinking intensely of Henry and that obviously his hands had been the last ones the roses had felt on them.  
“Do you miss him?”  
“Awfully. It may sound strange, but I think of him every day.”  
“Oh dear. I am so sorry for your loss. You know you can come back anytime you feel like it?”  
Come back, to what? The apartment would certainly be completely changed, inhabited now by three girls. Nothing left of Henry’s spartan furniture, his few, well-chosen books (most of which were in our apartment now, due to the generosity of his family), his odd habit of using kerosene lamps instead of electric light. I thought back to the serene weeks I spent in his company there after my illness last winter. A flash of his bathroom and bloody chitons, dirty feet, twigs and leaves in messy hair also crossed my mind. I wouldn’t want to be in this apartment anymore.  
“That’s kind of you, thank you.”

I walked slowly back to our apartment, hands full of roses. All day long, I had had problems to ban images of Francis this morning in bed – every now and then, we enjoyed languid morning sex before I had to leave. This morning, I had entered him slowly and drowsily from behind, not sure if he was completely awake already. Until he suddenly moaned: “Want on my knees… Need you deeper…” and matters progressed seemingly wild and reckless. After which he slid slowly sideways and fell obviously asleep again while I took a shower. He offered me a breathtaking view of his marvelous butt when I came back to bring him his tea. I lowered myself on the bed, let one hand sink into the soft skin of his behind and kissed one of his white cheeks, nibbling and sucking and tenderly biting.  
“Go make yourself some toast!”  
I barely understood his sleepy, muffled voice, face down in the pillows. Despite sounding annoyed, I could see that his lips were twisted into a grin. He didn’t open his eyes.  
I smirked. Seeing no other way to say goodbye to him, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote him a short note:  
"Your ass might easily cause another ten-year war.  
That’s why I covered it.  
Love you from this angle, awake and asleep  
and forever."  
I had written in Greek because I knew Francis kept these poems, as he liked to call them, and let them lay around in unexpected places. Judy Poovey, who was dying with curiosity, had forced me one day to show her the apartment unexpectedly. She nosed around, of course, and had found a note of similar content. She couldn’t suppress giggling for the remaining ten minutes of her visit. I was mortified, Francis clearly sulking. I had told him not to use those as bookmarks – he had told me not to bring idiotic girls to our place.  
As twilight descended, I walked faster. I couldn’t expect it to see our lighted windows from below, to replace the lingering images of his lovely body with the real thing, to feel him in my arms again.  
I opened the door as always to warmth, soft light and delicious scents from the kitchen. Francis looked around the corner:  
“There you are. Darling. I missed you.”  
I hugged him awkwardly, trying not to bruise the roses.  
“Are they for me?”  
“For us. They are from Henry.”  
He looked at me with a severely shocked expression.  
“What do you mean, from Henry? That’s not funny.”  
“They are his, from his apartment. I met one of the girls who live there now.”  
Francis let out his breath. He had turned rather pale.  
“You almost frightened me.”  
“Come on.” I laid the roses on the counter, turning around for a vase. But first, I took Francis into my arms. He seemed to need some distraction.  
“But regardless where they come from, you earned them.” I kissed him. “For being such a shameless, uninhibited, demanding lover this morning.”  
He averted his gaze, but couldn’t suppress a crooked smile.  
“I couldn’t stop thinking of what you asked me to do all day long…”  
“Well, it didn’t take much persuasion to make you go along”, he mused.  
“Thank you for the poem, by the way. Glad you like … well, you know.”  
“Hmm…” I cupped his butt and started to nibble on his earlobe.  
“Wait, dinner’s ready. Didn’t you have enough for today?”  
He turned to the table to get his books away. A candle was already lighted and dishes and cutlery waited to be laid out, stacked on each other. I noticed with relief that Francis occupied himself with something at last – Mr. Blackwell, whose antique shop in the Village we had visited several times in the summer, had recommended Francis some literature about early American furniture, and he threw himself into the subject with his former intellectual curiosity. I saw this also as a sign of moving forward, of healing. And, who knows, a new field of interest and even a professional future for Francis?

Before going to bed, I had moved the crystal vase with the abundant spray of roses from our coffeetable to Francis’s night table. Their delicate raspberry scent lulled me into serene dreams, but I hadn’t slept long when Francis jerked up and looked around him wildly.  
“What?” I mumbled. “Francis, what’s up? Did you have a nightmare?”  
He sat rigid in the bed and tried frantically to gather some sheets around him.  
“He’s here!”, he wailed in a thin, horrified voice.  
“Who?”  
“Henry is here, I can feel him!” He clawed at me with icy fingers. “Don’t you?”  
I scrambled to sit up also and looked around in the dark room. Nothing.  
I touched Francis’s shoulder and he shrieked:  
“Turn on the light! I am scared!”  
I did so and took him into my arms. Just to make sure, I glanced over my shoulder anyway and looked around. Stranger things had happened before, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a glowing cigarette and Henry’s faint, well-manicured fingers somewhere in the dark. I was certain now the apparitions I had seen in the hospital while recuperating from the shooting were Henry’s ghost. I hadn’t been frightened then. I thought he had matters still unfinished which needed his attention and wanted to allow him this time of transition.  
Francis shivered:  
“He was here, I assure you. Do you think he will get us?”  
“No, silly, why ever should he? It’s Henry, you know him! He wouldn’t harm us.”  
While I was saying so, a tiny doubt crept into my mind. And my voice as well, apparently. We looked at each other.  
“Richard, I am totally scared. Do something.”  
I rubbed his back in circles, thinking about how to calm him down.  
“Let’s open all the windows. Sometimes, a soul can’t get out if everything is closed up.”  
He shrieked once more, slid down in the bed and drew the covers over his head.  
“Don’t leave me!”, I heard his muffled voice.  
I got up, slowly opened the bedroom window and drew the curtain to the side. It had gotten noticeably cooler. Dark clouds raced in front of the moon.  
I went into the hallway, turned on the light and did the same in the kitchen. After I had opened the window there also, I proceeded to the living room to do the same.  
“And in your room also”. I had heard Francis’s pattering, naked feet behind me. He looked funny, having draped the light wool blanket I had covered him with this morning hastily over his naked body. His tousled hair stood in every direction and he stared wild-eyed around him.  
I put an arm around his shoulder and led him to the sofa. Switching on the little lamp, I threw one more blanket in his direction and got glasses and Scotch from the kitchen. Handing him his, I said:  
“Henry had a close bond with you. You were his first friend here, remember? It shouldn’t surprise me if he wants to see you are fine. Just that. Nothing more.”  
He continued to stare at me frightened.  
“Do you… do you really think it’s possible? Do you believe that?”  
“I don’t know”, I answered. “I don’t know anything about that. But sometimes I think if a soul had to leave early, prematurely, whether by accident or on his own volition, he might need to come back. Somehow. To say goodbye. Or convince himself everything is fine with his loved ones he left behind.”  
“No!”, Francis whimpered.  
“Francis, that’s nothing to be afraid of! He is – how can I put it – he is on the other side. He sees us, but he cannot touch us. It’s maybe like – frosted glass or something? He’s in a different world.”  
“Why are you so calm? Aren’t you afraid?”  
I hesitated, took a sip of my drink.  
“Maybe because I want to see him. Want to have him here. I don’t want him to be gone.”  
“So do I.” Silently, Francis had started to cry. I watched the glistening tears snake their way down his cheeks. “I miss him so much.”  
I moved over to draw Francis to my chest. He cried even more. I stroked his head.  
“I miss him, too. I still cannot believe what he did.”  
Francis sobbed and sniffed. I groped for a handkerchief and wiped his face. He took it from me, blew his nose and looked sadly into my eyes:  
“I don’t know if I can ever get over it.”  
“We will, someday. Somehow. But it needs time. And Henry needs time also.”  
Francis hiccupped.  
“Let’s not drive him away, shall we? If he needs to wander, let’s welcome him.”  
“Are you mad? You scare me! What if he comes when I am alone?”  
“I am convinced he won’t harm you. He just wants to make sure you are doing fine. Maybe he just wants to sit next to you a little. Like earlier. Maybe you should offer him a cigarette?”  
“Do you really believe what you are saying?”  
“Yes. In fact, I am going to get him a drink also.”  
I got up.  
“Don’t!”, Francis wailed in a high voice.  
“Now calm down. Do you remember how he used to set out little plates with food for wandering souls on his porch? He really believed in this stuff. Maybe he still does. So, Henry, here’s your glass. Cheers.”  
Francis stared at the glass. Nothing happened. I squeezed his hand.  
“Do you think the roses did that?”, he asked after a while.  
“Might be. Do you want me to put them out?”  
“No”, he said slowly. “Let’s not drive him out, as you said.”  
He curled into my arms and put a cold hand onto my thigh.  
“Maybe he really wanted to see we are okay?”  
“Yes”, I nodded. “And when he saw us sleeping naked, in one bed, he thought: Finally, these dumb boys. Hopefully, Richard isn’t too stupid to fuck him properly.”  
“No”, he protested weakly, hiding his face on my chest. “Henry would never use such a plebeian expression.”  
“You are right. Let me see: hopefully, Richard informed himself on how to satisfy a man. Too bad I am not here anymore to give him a tiny little lecture on appropriate sources the Ancients have supplied so abundantly regarding these matters. Next time he is in the library, I will push Ovid in front of his feet.”  
Francis giggled.  
“Henry, if you are here – Richard is a natural. I am so blessed with him and happier than ever. Don’t worry.”  
Suddenly, the curtain at the window billowed and swayed in a large curve into the room. Then it inflated, quivered a little and was quiet again.  
We looked at each other. I think we both had goosebumps. We took some time until we were able to speak again.  
“I guess this was the cold weather front they announced”, I tried to calm Francis.  
But he was calm.  
“Maybe I just learned how to deal with ghosts. I think I am not afraid anymore.”  
He let his gaze wander around the room and breathed out.  
We finished our drinks in silence. Before going to bed again, Francis laid his cigarettes and lighter purposefully next to Henry’s glass and smiled to me with raised eyebrows:  
“Just in case…”


End file.
